i recently worked at a place were the following things really happened.

a new safety nazi took over and implimented these and many more costly **** brained ideas:

1) yellow tape or paint on all edges of machines

2) a sign for recognising bathrooms as tornado shelters, we are in a three level concrete building, with a basement and someplaces a sub-basement.

3) tornado drills, this was great for production

4) fire drill, same as above

5) confined space signs so people dont crawl into these assigned areas. these areas include, sewers, air handlers, bottoms of elevator shafts, tops of elevator shafts, electrical panels, electrical boxes, machine cavities, empty shipping containers and so on. no one has yet to attempt to hide or nap in any of these areas, yet.

6) a overflash warning sticker on every electrical panel.

7) special cotton suits for people who will work on these electrical panels.

8) 10" dia by 4 ft tall yellow poles attached to the floor in front of every electrical panel so no one parks anything in front of these panels. now the maintanance crews have these yellow poles to contend with whenever they work on a panel. these had to number over fifty-(not made in house).

couple ideas like this, labor costs, and its no wonder mass production has left for china.

Sounds a bit over the top to me. engineers aren't idiots, you should only have this level of paranoia if the public have access to the shop. The trouble with going this far is when you see something you think is unsafe but it hasn't got a warning label on it you could think "oh well, it doesn't say it's unsafe- must be ok then".

Mind you, saying that: I sharpened a knife for a collegue (and I mean real sharp- you could cut a ciggy paper with it) and he decided to see how sharp "sharp" was by running his thumb down the blade... guess I should have stuck a "caution sharp!" sticker on it. Claret everywhere. Pass the elastoplasts :)

I'm all for safety, but you can go too far- I swear I've seen a packet of KP peanuts with the rather helpfull cautionary warning "caution, may contain nuts" on it. Honest.

ive machined diamonds. carbide, CBN and even composites of the above.
if your patient,(or i should say if the boss is), it isnt bad of a job at all.